Moderate joy in Mudville

May 7-9, 2025

Port Clinton, PA to Fort Franklin Road

Mile 1244.7

The weather forecast was clear for the morning at least on the day I headed out from Port Clinton. Because the trail goes right through the town, it was an easy matter to get started, and the first mile or so of the trail was flat.

As it wound uphill towards the ridge, there were some slick patches and loose rocks, but I made decent time. While I was in Port Clinton, I’d connected with yet more friends from Lititz—Amanda and Matt would be able to meet me at Rt. 309 up the trail, but not until Sunday. This meant slowing down a bit to align my travel time with their availability. 

So for the time being, I intended to go shelter to shelter, which would put me in line to meet them as planned. Today I was only shooting for ~7 miles, to the shelter at Windsor Furnace. Tomorrow, I would hike to the Eckville shelter, another enclosed cabin setup (and also slated for demolition in the coming years), and from there, Allentown shelter. Finally, on Saturday, I would head to 309 and the Lookout Hostel, where I’d meet Amanda and Matt the next day.

I hit Windsor Furnace with no real problems right around lunchtime, took my shoes off, and made myself a leisurely lunch.

I hadn’t seen a lot of hikers yet, and I was surprised—I knew a lot of folks who had planned to stay in Port Clinton or nearby Hamburg; I’d run into Shuttle at the restaurant, and I knew ESSC was in Hamburg, among others. 

Eventually, Ezra came in—but he was not feeling well. He looked miserable, and made plans to get off-trail for the weekend; he was mostly just waiting for a ride. I gave him some water, and wished him well. 

It felt weird not to push onward, but the shelter was nice, the spring was flowing well given recent rains, and I found I’d missed tent camping a bit. Aside from some locals walking through in the afternoon, I was alone. Time seemed to stretch. I saw a porcupine, but couldn’t get to my camera in time for a picture. Sleep that night was deep and calm.

I was ready to go decently early the next morning. Windsor Furnace had a tempting blue blaze that would cut 4 miles off the trail, but I’d miss the Pulpit and the Pinnacle, two noteworthy views/landmarks of the PA trail. With only 9 miles to Eckville, I figured I had ample time to see them both before the rain started. 

Things got rocky fairly quickly. There were blazes, but with all the boulder fields I did get turned around a fair bit—never so far off-trail that I had to backtrack, but often I had to redirect and pick my way back in another direction.

Not the trail to the Pulpit, as it turns out

Also not the trail to the Pulpit

At one point I found what I thought was the trail and ended up on the grounds of a local astronomy society quite close by. 

It was only by walking through these grounds that I ended up finding the Pulpit itself:

Thankfully, the Pinnacle was a lot harder to miss. A huge random cairn stood in the middle of the trail with an actual sign. I went up there to have lunch.

The weather was holding, and I still felt strong, even after all of the unnecessary boulder scrambles. Soon after the pinnacle, the trail merged with a forest service road, which made for easy hiking. I ran into a hiker coming out of the blue blaze shortcut I hadn’t taken. Her trail name was Fairchild, and she’d been hiking from Boiling Springs, looking to complete the remaining miles of a thru hike she’d started last year, I believe. Her hiking partner, Trash Tye, was taking a break just beyond. From the sound of it, both of them were also bound for Eckville today. The blue blaze trail had been a lovely hike, from their description, but I felt satisfied with my choice to go the long way. After all, I was only coming from Windsor Furnace, not from Port Clinton as they had. I’d gotten some good views and good stories. And I still had the miles in me to get to Eckville. 

It was starting to cloud over by the time I reached the shelter.

Eckville had a different vibe than the 501–it felt more like a dusty garage than a hiker cabin, but it still felt good to be under an enclosed roof, since it was supposed to come down hard again this evening. I left a note in the hiker log—looked like Shuttle had stayed there only a day before—and began to unpack. I set myself up with a bunk and went down to the caretaker’s porch to charge devices a bit before the weather got bad.

Fairchild and Trash Tye got in shortly thereafter. They didn’t love the vibe of the shelter—Fairchild called it “rustic,” which I learned meant my version of  ‘grim’—but chose to stay anyway, since by now it was full-on raining. Dry Doc, someone they’d traveled with a bit before, came in later, as did a pair of brothers, Pharmacist and Poet, and an older man who elected to tent outside. With that, every bunk in the shelter was filled. Mick, the caretaker, said that as many as 18 people had found a way to sleep in the shelter when it rained. I spent far too much time trying to figure out how that would be possible. 

The shelter being full and crowded, there was a lot of talk. Pharmacist was a genial fellow with a carrying voice, partial to phrases like “criminy” and “Oh Mylanta!” Dry Doc, an actual physician, had for some reason purchased a small pack of cigars back in Port Clinton, although he had never smoked one. There was an odd stretch of time where Pharmacist was simultaneously trying to teach Dry Doc how to properly smoke a cigar while holding forth on how much easier it would be to solve the federal deficit issue if smoking were more broadly legal and/or more accepted. Dry Doc, meanwhile, appeared to be politely trying to point out the flaws in this plan without actually disagreeing. Poet, Pharmacist’s younger brother and a vegan who had just returned from some time in India, was talking to the older gentleman about photographic technology and the fall of Kodak. Everyone, meanwhile, was cooking on their stoves inside, because of the rain. The night felt surreal, after the last few days of solitude.

The next morning was sodden and dark. Folks drifted out in ones and twos. Fairchild, Trash Tye, and I were the last ones out. They were bound for the Lookout Hostel on route 309; I was aiming for the Allentown shelter 4 miles before, since I was hoping to be at 309 on Sunday to meet my friends. This was Friday—staying at Allentown would mean a quick 4 miles to the hostel on Saturday and a half day for resupply and errands before meeting up with them on Sunday.

It had rained so hard the night before that the trail itself was essentially a stream of water.

After the first 15 minutes, it became clear that there would be no point in trying to keep my feet dry. Most of the hiking was wading, and trying to avoid any small, sharp rocks beneath the surface of the water as best I could. It was still raining hard enough to make having my phone out a risk, so I didn’t get many pictures of this, but there were several points where I was calf-deep in water without ever leaving the trail. Boulder scrambles were a bit sketchy, too, because of the wet rocks, and I had to take them very slowly. The biggest of the day was Dan’s Pulpit, which took the better part of an hour to get through. 

When I made it to Allentown shelter, Fairchild was there, as well as a section hiker named Matt who was taking a zero day in the shelter itself. Fairchild asked about Trash Tye, but I hadn’t seen her. The rain was lightening up but it was going nowhere. Fairchild moved on towards the hostel—she had texted to reserve a bunk, but everything was full; every hiker with a brain was coming in from the rain. The best she could get was space on the garage floor, but she was still going. Just after she left, Trash Tye rolled in. I had set up my bunk in the shelter and changed to my dry camp clothes, but I couldn’t stop shivering, even wrapped in my sleeping bag. Pushups helped for a moment, but didn’t last. I thought about walking for a bit, but it was still raining and these were my only dry clothes. I texted to see if there was any space left on the garage floor. There wasn’t, but the hostel keeper, Yardsale, referred me to a local farmer who sometimes took people in. He agreed to pick me up on a road about 2 miles out, and it was decided. I packed up and started walking again.

The farmhouse was not near the trail, so it took a while to get there. The farmer, Phil, and his wife, Julie, were awesome. They used to hostel using a cottage on their property, but someone was now renting that space full time. I ended up staying in a room they’d converted in the loft of their barn, heated from below with a wood stove.

Phil gave me a brief tour of the farm, where they kept chickens, ducks, and sheep. (There were 22 lambs, a bumper crop by any measure.)

Julie gave me dinner and breakfast. Somehow, I’d gone from an incredible story of discomfort and struggle to an incredible story of rescue. I woke up to the crowing of roosters and felt deeply fortunate.